Evangelisti earned his degree in Political Science in 1976 with a historical-political thesis. He was born in Bologna, where he currently lives; he spends some time each year in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, where he owns a house. Until 1990 his career was mainly academic. He also worked for the Italian Ministero delle Finanze. His first written works were historical essays, including five books and some forty articles. In 1993 his novel Nicolas Eymerich, inquisitore won the Urania Award, which was established by Urania, Italy’s main science fiction magazine, with the aim of discovering new talent in the field. Urania published other novels of the series in the following years: Le catene di Eymerich, Il corpo e il sangue di Eymerich, Il mistero dell'inquisitore Eymerich, Cherudek, Picatrix, la scala per l'inferno, Il castello di Eymerich, Mater terribilis. Most of the last ones were however first published as hardcover. Nicolas Eymerich is a real historical character, member of the order of the Dominicans and inquisitor in the Spanish Inquisition. He was born in 1320 in Girona, Catalonia, and died in 1399. Evangelisti’s interpretation of his character is a cruel, ruthless, haughty, restless man, who acts mercilessly to protect the Catholic Church against perceived menaces of natural or supernatural origin. At the same time he shows an outstanding intelligence and a deep culture in his actions. In the novels of the series he investigates the mysterious phenomena of Medieval Europe, thus subtly influencing many of the historical events of that epoch; on many occasions the solution of the riddles comes up from stories which are narrated along with the main plot, normally set in the present and in the future. Evangelisti's atmospheres are normally dark, nightmarish, haunting. Another success of 1999, also translated in several languages, is the Magus trilogy, a romanticized biography of the famous Middle Ages prophecies writer Nostradamus. The three novels, Il presagio, L’inganno and L'abisso sold 100,000 copies in Italy. Evangelisti's novels are greatly appreciated in France, Spain, Germany and Portugal. He is currently the director of the Carmilla magazine. In the last years he has written some works which show his love for heavy metal music, namely the short stories collection Metallo urlante and the novels Black Flag and Antracite: they are set during the American Civil War and feature a new character, Pantera, a palero shaman. One of his latest novels, Noi saremo tutto, spans several decades of the last century, exploring the life of Eddie Florio, a gangster, against the background of the history of the trade unions and the workers' battles for civil rights. Mexico is the setting for his next two novels, Il collare di fuoco, which was published in November 2005 and Il collare spezzato. In 2007 La luce di Orione was released, the ninth title in the Eymerich series, followed in 2010 by Rex tremendae maiestatis. Tortuga, a novel about pirates of the Caribbean, was published in 2008.
Main works
Historical essays
Storia del partito socialista rivoluzionario 1881-1893, Cappelli, Bologna
Il galletto rosso, precariato e conflitto di classe in Emilia Romagna 1880-1890 with Salvatore Sechi,, Marsilio, Venezia
Sinistre eretiche, dalla banda Bonnot al Sandinismo, 1905-1984, SugarCo, Milano
Gallerie nel presente. Punk, Snuffs, Contras: tre studi di storia simultanea', Lacaita, Bari
Gli sbirri alla lanterna: la plebe giacobina bolognese dall'anno I all'anno V '', Bold Machine, Bologna
